Lineage 2: Revolution Game Review

Lineage II: Revolution is a free to play mobile MMORPG, featuring large dungeons, raids, PvP arena matches, and a variety of PvP sieges.

Lineage II: Revolution is the next game in NCSoft’s popular Lineage franchise, following Lineage II. It also marks the first time the Lineage franchise has been ported over on to mobile devices.

In a world filled with terrible Mobile MMORPGs comes NCSoft’s latest creation – Project TL– I mean, Lineage 2: Revolution.

So, I was contacted by NCSoft a few months ago when they launched the game initially regarding doing a sponsored video for Lineage II: Revolution, tentatively referred to as Lineage henceforth for my sanity and yours, which I ultimately agreed at the time not to do.
Why? Easy. NCSoft ruins games they publish.

So, in light of this, I feel like it is totally within the realm of possibility for me to do an honest, objective, not at all biased video on their latest – and no doubt greatest MMORPG to date.

After suffering through 2GB worth of data that didn’t pre-download when I installed the game (Thanks, NCSoft) I was greeted by some – actually, quite beautiful graphics. For a mobile game.
Jumping into character creation, we had 4 different races to choose from. Humans, Elves, Dark Elves, and Loli’s-I mean, Dwarves.
Now I was excited as I wanted to know the differences between female Elves and female Dark Elves. I’ve played the Lineage games in the past and loved how the Dark Elves looked.
They were actually my favorite race – so you can imagine my disappointment to find out that each race is gender locked.
Yeah, gender locked RACES. Not classes, RACES. As in.. the only Dwarf is the female loli. So procreating is.. well, I’m sure that must be entertaining to watch. Or disgusting.

You tell me.

Each race has the same 3 base classes: Warrior, Rogue and Mystic.
Each base class also has access to Specialized Classes that allow players to branch off into a handful of different paths, giving players more diversity in playstyle and party composition.
These unique classes can be accessed at level 31 and are obtained after completing a series of class change quests. Upon completion, new active and passive skills are unlocked.

Now the character customization, just like the race-system, is super detailed.
You have 3 unique hairstyles to choose from and.. end! Like I said, the depth and thought NCSoft put into this is truly baffling.

Then we come to the autopathing. Oh, joy! Auto pathing to quest objectives! How did you know that was one of my favorite features, NCsoft?
Well, all that you could do to make this better would be to include auto-combat as wel- Oh, crap! Auto-combat as well, damnit!
Well, I guess I always wanted to know what Lineage 2 would be like if I watched someone else play it instead of playing it myself. Now I get to experience that firsthand!
.. but I guess that’s what you guys do when you watch us, right? But.. at least we’re entertaining, right? Right?

Something else I enjoyed was the auto-equipping of individual gear-Okay, you know what? Enough on what the game doesn’t allow you to do – let’s find out what the game does let you do!

The game does allow to you change the visual appearance of your gear. So if you thought it was going to be another garbage MMO where your gear doesn’t change appearance – I’m looking at you, Black Desert! Then you’re wrong.
Okay, maybe Black Desert does but it’s so insignificant!

Another thing I enjoyed was the upgrading of ones equipment. It’s a system I actually think other companies should employ in MMORPGs.
Not only can you upgrade through the deconstruction of your current gear, using it as a base material, but you’re also capable of further upgrading it once you max out its level by combining two max level gear pieces together, resetting its level back down to 1.

Now, let’s get to one of the entertaining parts in any MMORPG – the dungeons!
Lineage 2 has various modes you can enter – Normal Dungeons, Temporal Rift’s and Monster Dungeons. Furthermore, there are a variety of actual dungeons you can choose to participate in.
I was slightly aroused at the sight of this as honestly.. I’d been waiting to get to a more difficult part of the game.
Then I learned that every dungeon is auto-completed, like the vast majority of things in-game. And if not to add insult to injury, to continue entering dungeons.. you need to “recharge” with diamonds. Diamonds that are either purchasable through the cash shop, or earned in small quantities in-game through various daily activities.

I learned that there were various ways of powering your character up that didn’t involve gear as well, such as Achievements.
Completing a variety of Achievements in-game procured Achievement Points that count towards an overall percentage – one that upon reaching 100% levels up, gaining various stat bonuses.
Then we had Rune Imprinting, essentially functioning like the Sphere Grid from Final Fantasy X.
You have a grid that you move around, selecting what stats you want to raise. While this actually does promote some individuality in your character, in the end everyone will have everything learned anyway.
Lastly there was Honor ranking – which brings me to the PvP aspect of the game.
Man was I excited to get into the PvP. I figured I might at least be able to control my character there, right? Right?! RIGHT?!
Turns out you actually can. To my surprise, you can control your character – it’s just that the AI does it much better, much faster than I can move my fingers to click the buttons, so I had to leave it on auto.
Yes, I had to leave the Player vs Player combat set to AI controller just so the enemy AI didn’t beat my ass.
The battles themselves are so ridiculously one-sided as well. I got a weapon from a loot box that was at least 25x stronger than anything else I had. Which left me 1-3 shotting people 2-3 times my level.
While that made for some entertaining duels, it was so ridiculously unbalanced that I almost felt like barfing.
Now, although it’s all automated, there are various forms of PvP such as the Arena, Open Sieges, Fortress Sieges and Castle Sieges.
I just don’t really see much need in doing them outside of letting them auto-battle other players who’re also auto-battling you in a vicious cycle of AI vs AI pv.. wait, would you still call it PvP since neither player is playing?
Maybe AvA would be better.. Let’s coin that term. AvA.

I will admit though that coming across an Elite Boss named Silverhorn before I’d gained access to that weapon and armor mentioned earlier left me with my ass a little raw.
He mopped the floor with me – I had to run to a higher level player in an attempt to survive, as he hit so hard it left me a little dazed.

Now I know I shouldn’t have been expecting something akin to Lineage or Lineage 2, both of which I’d played years ago, but this..
I don’t even know what to call this.
Yes, I can see how it might be somewhat addicting and it might be an entertaining way to pass the time when you have a few spare minutes as you can in fact control your character whenever you want to. I just..
It felt so empty to me, as most mobile MMORPGs do.

So in retrospect, I’m actually kinda glad I didn’t take the sponsorship.
The game isn’t bad, it’s just bad for a Lineage title.
And I’m sure all you Lineage II: Revolution fans are going to no doubt hate on me for having this opinion.

Operating System: Android 4.0 or later / iOS 6.0 or later